The Story of Nokia; From Riches to Rags

The technology industry is changing so rapidly that you can hardly expect any company to remain in the spotlight for more than a few years. What happened with Nokia is not a secret, Android and Apple crashed it. Historically, Nokia is an adaptive company, moving in and out many businesses like rubber, paper, and electricity. Nokia was never a technological laggard from the very beginning. Nokia lead the market for more than a decade and their performance was really impressive but Nokia lead has gradually declined because of so many reasons. Unfortunately for Nokia, it did not prove to be as indestructible as its ‘legendary’ 3310 model. Nokia overtook huge company like Motorola in 1998 and takes the crown of one of the biggest phone manufacturers but unfortunately, Nokia has lost its prestigious in the mobile phone industry.

In the mobile phone industry, Nokia was considered as a market leader for its massive customer base and huge reach. Nokia ruled the mobile phone industry with its Symbian OS which was the backbone of a whole success story. Customers enjoyed the features, ease of use and simplified graphics user interface provided by Symbian OS. Nokia is a hardware company and their engineers were expert in building the physical device, Nokia lacks programmers that make their devices interface attractive. The company underestimates the significance of software, including the applications run on smartphones. Nokia also underestimates the transition of smartphones and it is one of the main reasons that the company enthralled by its past success.

Nokia had made wrong decisions when their rivals were thinking about opting an Android-based operating system; Nokia wants to stick with Microsoft and decides to only create windows phones. Companies like Samsung, HTC, LG and Sony Ericsson all had made the right decision. Nokia failed to respond to the shifting customer demands and operating system like IOS. The smartphone market exploded and customer opted for mini size computers instead of feature phones with tedious phone browsers.

To conclude the Nokia story, in this high technology era where companies are bringing more and more innovation within their products Nokia underestimates consumer power, changing trends and innovation and gets punished from the customers. However, Nokia is making a comeback in 2017 with its new range of Andriod-based smartphones and it is early to say how customers will respond to those new devices in comparison to already established iPhone and Samsung smart phones.